Vice Adm. Nancy Norton, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency, has said DISA believes that partnerships with industry could help lighten up the burden and result in stability that “can generate much-needed economic growth.”

Norton noted in her opening remarks at DISA’s 2018 Forecast to Industry event in Linthicum, Md., how the agency builds up partnerships, introduce reforms to the Defense Department and boost warfighters’ lethality in support of Defense Secretary James Mattis’ three lines of effort, DISA said Monday.

She discussed the event’s theme “Trusted Partnerships” and how collaboration with industry could help develop new capabilities for soldiers.

“Creating trusted partnerships supports DISA’s vision to be the trusted provider to connect and protect the warfighter in cyberspace,” Norton said.

Other speakers at the event include Dana Deasy, chief information officer at DoD; Tony Montemarano, DISA executive deputy director; and David Bennett, operations center director at DISA.
 

The Food and Drug Administration and the Defense Department have formalized the framework of an earlier plan to accelerate the development and availability of emergency medical products for the U.S. military.

FDA said Friday it signed a memorandum of understanding with the DoD’s Office of Health Affairs to commence with the program’s implementation, as provided for under House Resolution 4374 that was passed in 2017.

The MoU authorizes the FDA and the Pentagon to work toward faster deployment of medical products meant to diagnose, treat or prevent life-threatening conditions affecting U.S. service members, including those caused by chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear agents.

“It’s our honor and duty to support our military personnel by ensuring they have access to safe and effective medical products – especially products that meet the unique needs and settings in which soldiers may require medical treatment,” said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

 

The Government Accountability Office has published its audit of an annual joint report by the Defense Department and Energy Department on the estimated budget required for the upkeep and modernization of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

The GAO stated that it had found the budget estimates in the joint report for fiscal year 2018 “generally accurate and complete based on the underlying data that DoD used to create them.” The oversight agency also said the joint report had managed to address concerns previously raised about the methodology used to arrive at the budget estimates.

The joint report is required by a provision within the fiscal year 2012 National Defense Appropriations Act. The same provision requires the GAO to review the report for completeness and accuracy.

The DoD and the DoE prepared the FY 2018 joint report based on a variety of sources, including the President’s Budget and the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan.

The joint report, however, did not factor in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which was promulgated after the report entered its final review phase.

Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command, has said the U.S. Navy is considering various strategies to reach its goal of deploying 355 ships, Federal News Network reported Friday.

Moore unveiled in an interview that the service seeks to extend the service life of its existing vessels as it will not meet its target of a 355-ship fleet if it will solely focus on manufacturing new models.

“Our initial estimate was that it would take until about 2052 if you were just going to build new ships, and increase the pace that you could build them,” he said.

The Navy is reviewing its fleet of destroyer, amphibious assault and littoral combat ships to see which ones can still be used while new vessels are being built.

In a Federal Drive with Tom Temin discussion, Moore explained that NAVSEA is also considering procuring foreign designs and simultaneously ordering two aircraft carriers to shrink the shipbuilding timeline from six or seven years to four.

The Navy’s past experience of purchasing two vessels at the same time resulted to the delivery of five carriers within 17 years.

The National Institutes of Health has invested $220M for a new wave of neuroscience programs under the multiagency Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative.

NIH said Friday some of the 200 new projects will involve developing and assessing technologies for monitoring brain activity, nursing paralysis patients, treating mental illnesses and exploring non-addictive medication for individuals who have fallen into the opioid crisis.

Francis Collins, director of NIH, said the new initiatives will provide new resources needed to unearth answers for various neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders as part of the institute’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term initiative.

The BRAIN Initiative now has more than $400M in Congress-supported funds just for this year alone, which is more than 50 percent than the amount spent for the program in 2017.

A few of the existing programs financially support the development of new technologies that can help map brain circuit activities.

Eric Chewning, deputy assistant secretary for industrial policy at the Defense Department, has said he projects that DoD could address about 33 percent of the identified supply chain gaps within a year and deal with another third in the next few years, Defense News reported Friday.

DoD issued in October a White House-commissioned study that found approximately 300 risks in the U.S. defense industrial base.

Chewning told the audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Friday that he considers the remaining issues in the report as “things that long term we’re going to have to manage, recognizing that new stuff is going to come in and things are going to pop out as we dynamically manage the industrial base.”

The report said those vulnerabilities include suppliers that have decided to exit the defense market, those that could disappear from the sector and foreign-owned suppliers that could potentially leave the market in a critical situation.